How Did I Become an MBA-Skeptic?
Let's set the scene.
Cut to a young nerdy black girl in University of Maryland (UMD), College Park in 2008 double majoring in Accounting and Information Systems. It was the Fall after the mortgage crisis and I was just entering the internship job market. At the Robert H. Smith School of Business, you started this process early even at the start of your freshman year. This year was different. The previous summer, hundreds of fellow students' job offers were rescinded. This included the juggernauts like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch which started a ripple-effect to even the Big Four Accounting Firms. This left many students with no choice but to extend their schooling into the UMD MBA Program, hoping to stay competitive and reap the benefits of their labor 2 years down the road. This all made sense until I was sitting in the Career Center waiting area eagerly anticipating my internship interview and seeing a sea of mentors and polished MBA 1st years competing with me as an awkward junior for the same internships. Though I definitely empathized with my former upperclassmen, the experience was intimidating and honestly left a bad taste in my mouth.
Scene 2.
I'm at EY and I'm a Manager interviewing a recent MBA graduate. We're going over the basics like background, job history, and interests. I move into their skill set and the candidate stops me, "What about my MBA?". I look back at them quizzically, "What about it?" I ask. They say "Well I've gotten it. Doesn't it count for anything?" So I ask, "No it can, I'm so sorry! How can you correlate what you've learned in your MBA program to this job?". Now this wasn't a trick question. It was genuine! I thought out of the mouth of this sharply dressed professional was going to be litany of course work, project experience, connections, mentors, etc. I was expecting that they were going to prove why they should honestly have my job outright. Imagine my surprise, when their face is just as quizzical as mine was! "Well...not much at all," they answered, shuffling in their seat, "but it should definitely make me a shoo-in right?" "Well, we don't offer arrangements like that with universities and if you can't tell me how this MBA relates to the job, we probably should move on" I say with finality. Now, I can definitely caveat that this person needed more interview training and how to apply credentials to the specific job they were interviewing for. However, there was more than one candidate that I interviewed that had this impression or implied that the MBA was a step-up from a non-MBA achieving candidate. The problem? This was a junior level consulting job. The level of experience, until they can provide otherwise, is virtually the same. Additionally, a student that skipped the MBA track and went straight to work in a similar field, was actually more of a shoo-in than the MBA candidate. In fact, the majority of the interviewing candidates that had more work-based experience were able to apply them to the behavioral questions than those straight out of their MBA.
Thus, I became an active MBA skeptic. I was the person giving advice on how to succeed without having an MBA and praising certifications. I was scoffing at people rattling off credentials and inwardly (sometimes outwardly) rolling my eyes when a colleague said they wanted to take off from work early (while myself or others picked up the slack) so they can attend their classes. I was a skeptical support system for friends raving about their MBA program acceptance. I knew they were either trying to escape the "Big Four" life or were looking for an excuse to move, but I was always ready for an excuse to celebrate at Marvin's on U Street. I would begrudgingly nod when they winded up back at "Big Four" again. Thus, it was me and my fellow non-MBA colleagues sitting around the EY water cooler extolling our successes and promotions and pointing fingers at MBA seekers who couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. Let's just say I took it further than being a MBA skeptic. I was a MBA hater. I wore the flag and walked in the parade! I was a card-toting member of the MBA Haters Club.
However, it was only 4 years after that unfortunate interview with the MBA graduate when I accepted my offer at Amazon. That's when I realized that I was significantly unprepared for the challenges ahead. The Big Four was drastically different (A blog post diving deep into this is coming). All of sudden, those naive biases regarding professional development in general were starting to break down. My limited world-view was starting to fall apart and I ended up looking at an MBA with a new light...
To Be Continued (Part 2 Coming Shortly)
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